Bella Italia and Its IT Challenge

Today we'll go to Italy. Because, why not?

This magnificent country remains a foundational source for Western history, art, and civilization. And conversations. More on that later.

Bella Italia is visited by 420 million people (seven times its population) annually, including 12 million from the US.

Italy remains the eighth largest economy in the world. But it scores quite poorly in the research I've been conducting for the past several years, with a national IT infrastructure that lags almost all of Europe. The chart below shows that Italy is the laggard among the 33 European countries I survey, trailing even depressed Greece.

Lagging the Rest of Europe

This particular chart highlights the European countries among the 110 I survey -- relative IT dynamics are on the y-axis (up is good, down is not), and the challenge facing each nation to improve significantly is on the x-axis (left is less challenging, right is more challenging). I've highlighted leaders Finland and Ukraine, along with Greece and Italy for points of comparison.

But hey, hold on a sec, Galileo. Are things really that bad in Italy?

The short answer is "no."

A longer answer goes like this:

I've used my rankings and data for the past several years as a starting point to conversations. Italy, more than most countries, refuses to be abstracted to a single dot and requires a much longer conversation -- preferably on a terrazza anywhere in the country.

One key point in the conversation concerns income disparity. Italy has one of the widest income disparities within Europe, and the widest of all EU members among its regions. Its average GDP per-person is around $30,000 -- this is 20% below France, 25% below Germany, and lower than the poorest US state of Mississippi.

Its poorest, southern regions have GDP levels of about 60% of Italy's national average. In contrast, its wealthier areas (such as Milan in the north) are comparable to France. This disparity makes it difficult to rate Italy with a single number. The country's north/south divide is real.

Do Italians Really Care?

A second, more pertinent issue is, do Italians really care? Do the nation's citizens aspire to be a cool techno-leader like Finland, or to compete in a big-country IT competition with heavyweights Germany and the UK?

Perhaps not. After all, its northern business centers are already competitive with the rest of Europe, and its southern regions have a history, beauty, and traditions stretching back two millennia and beyond that need no modern-day validation through tech development.

Italians are right to be suspicious of change coming to their country. The flood of tourists has been causing problems throughout the country for decades, and few would wish Italy to become, say, San Francisco, a city that used to be America's capital of la dolce vita, but is now an overpriced, unfun tech campus.

(Meanwhile, the pic below is the author enjoying tourists amidst beautiful views and weather in Rome.)

It's too easy to get romantic about Italy, and to make glib comments about trivialities such as its police and military having the world's greatest uniforms. The food's good, too.

But the reality, as far as I can tell, is that Italy does need to commit itself to a better infrastructure in its less economically developed regions. It also needs to stare down a demographic trend that shows its population both aging and declining dramatically in the coming decades if it does not encourage immigration.

Its apparently chaotic government can be concerning to outside observers, too. There are eleven (!!) living former Prime Ministers of Italy. A total of 23 men (no women) have served in this post over the past 50 years (compared to nine US presidents), many of them more than once. The Italian parliament consistently represents a messy pastiche of opinion across the board, some of it extreme.

My hypothesis is Italians prefer things this way. They're quite aware that they've already experimented with a strong republic and an empire that ruled much of the known world, and also had a disastrous fling with fascism in the 20th century.

In fact, its present government, loosely structured and not overly effective, may be an example for younger countries struggling with their own overbearing governments today.

So Italy soldiers on in its current state as a solid member of the EU. Recently, Italy has tried to rattle the EU's economic structure by not exactly adhering to the organization's deficit requirements. But look at its government bonds: they're currently yielding 2.31%, at the EU's high end, but just a couple tenths of a percent above US government bonds. This is not Venezuela or any sort of developing or failing nation.

Outlines of a Plan

I would like to see Italy do these things:

* Focus on achieving a target of 5% of its young people 30 and under to go into IT in some capacity

* Encourage and develop public and private partnerships to generate new sources of electricity, datacenters, and IT jobs in the regions that are below the median in income. Not for a transformation, but for a measurable improvement. Not every country needs to be an IT superstar

* Debate seriously about immigration. This is an incendiary topic throughout the world right now, including in the US of course, but it is essential Italy wakes up about its demographic dilemma.

Yes, I would love to live in Italy. I would love to see its dot on my charts move up and to the left. And I will always enjoy the conversations, such as the one I witnessed below -- not about IT, but over the merits of a parking spot in Rome:

Italy, to me, presents a perfect example of a very mature country that is not going to morph into a modern technostate easily. In its own way, it can serve as a model for all the large countries of the world that wish to honor their past while trying to adopt to change.

As Joseph Heller noted in Catch-22, Italy endures. Sic transit gloria mundi.